bright eyes
by Rayel-Lah
Summary: In which Gilbert is a recently-fallen angel, Roderich is a human prophet, and Elizaveta, the con-artist with her own secrets, keeps the two in line.
1. Prologue

He calls himself _Gilbert_ after he Falls because: it feels right. Is there any other reason to do something like that? He Fell on a whim, after all, why not do everything else that way, too?

Or at least... this is what he tells himself. Better to indulge in comforting denial than admit he's more complex than others think he is. That he isn't stupid. He plays stupid better than anyone would suspect, wears it like a lie. _Like_ a lie.

But: Gilbert. It's a name. It'll do. He'll need a surname at some point, he supposes. Something to worry about later.

Another feather drops to the ground next to him. It was probably, he reflects, the fourth round of shots – or maybe the stranger he kissed behind the bar, open-mouthed like something a man can fall into. Maybe it's the act that he's forgetting what God looks like, or maybe he's forgetting God because he lost another feather. Doesn't matter. All that matters is the way it shines between his fingers, like a beam of light.

He twirls it about between his fingers. Back and forth and back again.

* * *

When he first Fell, he tried crawling into churches, curling up in the pews, and listening to the soft murmur of prayers. He was a holy thing, once, he insisted to himself. To himself because: nobody else would listen. Nobody else would care. Something like grief wrapped itself 'round his bones.

"I'm an angel cast down from Heaven," he murmurs to himself, as if it mattered. He didn't _really_ 'Fall,' technically, because the term refers to those who decided to ally themselves with Lucifer so long ago, but the human languages lack a word for the process through which an angel is exiled from the heavenly plane. So 'Fall' will have to do. He repeats his words again, for good measure. "I'm an angel who got kicked out of Heaven."

Then he varies his words, that makes it easier somewhat. "I'm an angel that got kicked out of Heaven. The tribunal found me guilty, all right?" he whispers to himself. "Dishonorable discharge."

And maybe a part of him wishes he'd jumped, because that would have been braver than being _pushed_ , but the result is the same.

"I was too _awesome_ for them!" he says, louder. A man on his knees in the front of the chapel shushes him. Gilbert's eyes widen, and while he does not apologize, he does lower his voice.

"Yeah, way too awesome for _Heaven_."

* * *

And anyway, he's not really an angel anymore, can't _really_ call himself one. He's just... human, sort of. His feathers have all fallen away, at least. His form has been squished and stretched. He's not water and earth, though, not born of mud and God's hands. He's just something that looks like that. He doesn't have a soul, after all, that's the tricky part. Even the angels can't just manufacture one of those, and trying to cram something like that into a new vessel? Even a human-shaped one? Well, that would just be _rude_. Gilbert doesn't understand the process, really, but that's okay.

Best he can tell, he's stripped of wings and teeth and certainty and purpose. He's smaller. He feels almost blind. And like he has poison in his cells, the inevitability of death, one day, some fifty or sixty years out.

There's a space in his chest where he feels a soul should go. Still, this is better than the alternative. They could have unmade him entirely.

But his body feels new. He has shadows like bruises beneath his red eyes. He sees a shock of silver hair on his head. He has no idea which clothes to wear.

"Stuck here with nothing," he grumbles to himself. "But fine, I'll live here!" he shouts to the cross, to the sky, to the flickering of a candle, to all the things he still can't help but see God in.

"I'll _live_."

This, too, is very human.


	2. friends with humanity

Antonio barely looks up when the silver-haired young man comes into his restaurant. It's just after three in the afternoon, so it's not as though the place is overflowing with customers. Still, though, it wouldn't do to spook the ones they _do_ get during their slowest hours by staring.

He watches the fellow lick blood from his teeth as he sits down. A gaze is spared for the purpling black eye and the way pale fingers fumble with the menu, as if they had been recently broken. He's dressed a bit too warmly for early September, but Antonio's always been there to run a restaurant, not judge the customers on their fashion choices.

No, Antonio doesn't say anything even as he sends Lovino over to the table to take his order.

"Coke," the albino says at last, after scanning the 'drinks' portion of the menu carefully. Antonio doesn't understand the need, there isn't anything on there that one wouldn't expect, apart from what is really a rather _nice_ wine selection for a small family-owned restaurant.

"Coke, sure," Lovino repeats. "Diet or regular?"

"What?" comes the question, as if this stranger is somehow confused. His eyes widen somewhat and he looks about ready to bolt. "I didn't-"

"Never mind, _merda_ , I'll just get you a regular."

Lovino returns seconds later and plops the plastic cup down on the table without so much as a word. No offense seems to be taken, however, or it doesn't look like the customer is upset. He doesn't look like he's feeling much of anything. Red eyes fix themselves on the window as if there's something in the cloudless blue sky that will no longer be there if he so much as blinks.

"And your order?"

"Is 'seafood rice' any good?"

Lovino frowns in confusion. "... Sure?"

"That, then."

"I'll have it for you in a few minutes," he responds, muttering _damn weirdos_ under his breath. The odd customer takes a single sip of his soda, then pushes it away.

But Antonio is more curious than anything. If anything, 'intrigued' might be the word to use. Intrigued, interested. This is, after all, a small town, and his is the only restaurant serving South-European cuisine. He knows most people in this part of the city by reputation, if not by name, and he certainly doesn't know any albinos. Someone like this would stand out, surely.

Maybe he's new in town. Hopefully he's new in town- Antonio loves a good mystery, and loves even more the chance to make a new friend.

With a smile, he approaches the table. "Mind if I sit?"

The silver-haired stranger tears his eyes away from the window at last. His soda remains untouched. "Sure, why not?"

Antonio gestures to the glass. "Something wrong with the Coke?"

"No, I don't think so. I just heard... people are _always_ ordering Coke. I thought it must taste... not like this."

A surprised laugh emerges from Antonio's mouth. "That might be the dirty machine- I need to get someone to clean the dry syrup off the nozzles. I'd try it somewhere else before deciding for sure."

The albino nods. "I will."

"Oh, hey, my name is _Antonio_ by the way. I own this place, which is why I decided to make sure your drink was okay, not flat or anything."

"... Gilbert," comes the introduction, only a few seconds too late for the pause to be noticed.

"Nice to meet you, Gilbert."

"Of course it is, who wouldn't want to meet someone as awesome as me?" Gilbert replies, and Antonio lets out another startled laugh. And that's a quick recovery- where before the young man had seemed almost uncertain how to respond to anything, he now looks cheerful, grinning, as if he's found his land-legs, so to speak.

"And hey, look, I know it isn't my business," Antonio says, smiling kindly. "But if you're in trouble with someone, I have a friend of a friend who's a police officer-"

There's a flash of panic across Gilbert's face. "No, no thank you, I don't need... that," he stammers, red eyes darting this way and that.

"Whoever gave you that black eye..."

"I Fell."

Antonio feels a jolt of pain in his chest. "Look..."

Gilbert frowns, that same puzzled frown, as if the basics of interactions like these were something he _hadn't_ learned as a child. Red eyes search Antonio's green ones. "I really _did_ Fall," he insists. As if saying _I fell_ is as much an explanation as he needs to give.

"Okay, sure," Antonio says, smiling again, drawing the conversation back into safe territory. "I'm just putting it out there. You should know your options. You don't have to—never mind. I have to see what's taking so long with your food. Don't go anywhere, okay? I'll be right back."

.

"He's _weird_ ," Lovino is saying to his brother in the back kitchen, and Feliciano is shaking his head. "Even for this town."

"How strange can he be?"

"He looked at me like he didn't know what a Diet Coke was!"

"So? Maybe he's hungover, _fratello_. Or just sleepy. I know I am."

"Don't fall asleep on the food!"

"What's going on back here?" Antonio asks, and both brothers turn to look at him, one with a glare and the other with a dazed sort of smile.

"What, I can't talk to my brother now?" Lovino demands, and Antonio holds both hands up in surrender.

"I didn't say that-"

"You implied it!"

"No, no, you misunderstand, I was just wondering where our customer's order is."

"Bet he can't even pay for it, did you see him? Comes in at three on a weekday dressed like he's wearing his _only_ jacket."

Antonio shakes his head. "I'm sure he wouldn't come in just to order food he can't pay for."

"Whatever. I'll take it out to him once my brother finishes plating it."

As if recognizing his cue, Feliciano grins and finishes adding the final touches to the dish and Lovino scoops up the plate not a full second later, without even waiting for his brother's _ta-da~_

Antonio decides to leave the man alone while he eats, lest he seem like he's pestering.

When he peeks out not five minutes later, he spots, on the table, the still-untouched soda, as well as a plate of seafood, only the rice apparently having been eaten.

Beneath the glass sit a pair of crumpled twenty dollar bills.

"Hmph," Lovino says, going over to the table to clear the plates. "Is he stupid? That meal _and_ the drink only cost fifteen dollars. … Whatever."

.

It's been just over a week before Antonio sees Gilbert again. The bruises seem to be healing, and he's less clumsy with the menu this time.

He'd ordered a glass of water and a plate of spaghetti, on Lovino's recommendation and while he waits for the food to arrive, Antonio slides into the booth across from him.

"So, I never asked—are you new in town? It's just, I thought I knew everyone," Antonio begins, and Gilbert shoots him a grin as he sucks water through his straw with the fervor of a man who'd been lost in the desert.

Just outside the window, a delivery truck barrels down the street, causing Gilbert to jump, startled, but then the grin returns, easy as anything. As if smiling like that is just his natural state. Or maybe a defense mechanism.

"Yeah, I'm new in town. This place is pretty awesome, actually. Big!" he exclaims, looking excited. As if the concept of a large city was something new and exciting. Not that this city could be considered _huge_ , it was no New York City, no Tokyo, no London, but... sure, it's far from a small town. Antonio merely nods.

Antonio can hear Feliciano in the kitchen, the clattering of dishes being handled less carefully than the food he prepared. Green eyes dart to the bruised knuckles that the albino sported this time. Antonio knows what a fall looks like, sees clumsy Feliciano trip over everything from cracks in the pavement to his own feet.

"Are you okay?" he asks at last. "I mean, your knuckles."

"Yeah. Maybe," Gilbert answers. "Maybe. Someone hit me. But it's fine, I hit back. It wouldn't do to just, I don't know, roll over and take it? What kind of person would I be if I did _that_? I might not know everything but I know it's not good to just take a hit."

Antonio doesn't really know what to say to that. "Well—well, good. I'll leave you to your meal," he says, for once glad that Lovino had interrupted by half-dropping a plate of food in front of the customer he decided to chat with. Spaghetti sauce splashes up onto Gilbert's jacket, but the odd young man doesn't seem to care—or for that matter notice—and so Antonio leaves him be.

.

"Ah, Antonio, who is _this_?" a voice calls out and Antonio looks up as a scruffy blond descends upon the booth. He smiles at the sight of his friend.

"Gilbert is his name, he's new in town. This is his _third_ time visiting my restaurant in two weeks, I think I'm getting a new regular," Antonio replies, then turns to the aforementioned new regular. "Gilbert, this is Francis. Don't take anything he says too seriously. Lovino would call him an idiot, but I know he's just being eccentric."

" _Pardon, mon ami_ ," Francis says, sweeping into the booth. "But I can be _very_ serious when I wish to be!"

"Oh, of course!"

"Glad to meet you," Gilbert says, smiling. He's digging into a plate of lasagna this time and beside him sits a cup of coffee, which he didn't seem to care for until he discovered the sugar shaker and then, well, Antonio can smell the sweetness from across the booth.

"And you, Gilbert," Francis replies with a wink.

(A note on Francis: when Francis was ten years old there was a man who appeared in his dreams and had told him _Be not afraid_ and Francis remembered when his father read him a history tome on Joan of Arc, and Francis just nodded. The man was tall and broad-shouldered with long blond hair tied in braids, and he wore a green cloak, and—and Francis doesn't remember much else about him.

The man had taken his father's hand and walked away with him. Francis doesn't remember what happened after that.

Time passed. Then there was a funeral. As he grew, he dismissed the man as a dream.)

.

"So where are you from, originally?" Francis asks on Gilbert's sixth visit to the restaurant, and Antonio merely shakes his head.

"I tried asking him that too and he wouldn't answer. His accent sounds German but I can't figure out more. It's okay, _amigo_ , you're among friends, we're both European, too."

"I—well," Gilbert begins, frowning, seemingly trying to come up with a lie.

"Oh, if you won't tell us, you won't tell us," Francis says, dismissive, though Antonio can tell Francis wants to know at least as badly as he does. "What was it _like_ , your hometown? I don't need its name."

Gilbert goes quiet for so long that both of them stare at him. He'd become more and more chatty, as time had gone on, certainly much chattier than when he first came in, and Antonio has grown used to him chattering on with a grin on his face.

"You don't have to answer, if you don't—" Francis begins.

"It was like this, mostly," Gilbert answers after a moment. He looks out the window at the sky, heavy rainclouds moving in from somewhere-west-of-here. "Like this, but more. Brighter, warmer. Clean, I guess. Or like, fake-clean. The kind where things look spick-and-span until you knock something over."

"Why leave?" Antonio asks after a moment.

Gilbert lets out a laugh, almost bitter. "Uh, maybe I was tired of it. But, uh, I know I'm awesome and all but _hey_ , what about where _you're_ from, Francis? Paris, was it?"

And Francis, clever enough to know a cue to change the subject, laughs and begins discussing French architecture.


	3. divine imperfection

Gilbert is sitting in his usual booth on a Friday night. It's six in the evening and therefore far too crowded for Antonio to stop cooking long enough to spare time for more than a quick hello, but Gilbert doesn't mind. Lovino had taken his order and darted off to the kitchen to put it in. He has about seven or eight tables, by Gilbert's count, which is, apparently, a lot. The restaurant isn't that large, and he counted only twenty tables total, so he supposes that _is_ nearly half the restaurant.

Shaking his head (which has felt so much lighter, likely due to the absence of a halo, which he'd lost on a crosswalk two towns over after what was, apparently, four drinks too many), he sips his plastic cup full of ice water and prods at the lemon with his straw.

He had hoped to stay and chat with his friend, but Antonio's business _has_ to come first, no matter how awesome he agrees Gilbert is. Resolving to come back later, he stops the other server on his way out (a Belgian girl named Emma with whom he'd shared a few friendly chats but whom he'd never been able to get to know all that well). "Hey, tell Antonio I said hi, I'll be back tomorrow at three," he says, and she gives him a smile and a nod before darting off to refill someone's drink.

Once outside, Gilbert takes a deep breath of the cool night air, feels his human-lungs inflate and his human-tongue tastes exhaust from the cars on the road. He knows, or supposes, he has to stop thinking of his parts as human-parts, considering his very last feather fell off days and days ago and he was able to sell it for enough money to keep himself human-alive for ages, but still.

It's hard to forget divinity. Or something. He doesn't really like to think that way.

The sky is quiet, and he stares for a moment at the sunset, until he feels something like humming at the back of his skull. He watches a woman and man walk hand-in-hand down the street and thinks, for one maybe-crazy moment: _This is how you find something to replace God_.

.

(One of the few conversations he had with Emma, she tried to ask Gilbert about his family. Gilbert had thought about his closest little brother and shook his head. _I lost them_ , he'd said.

Emma had shaken her head and smiled gently. _It's okay_ , she told him. _You can find a new family. It'll be in the last place you think to look, sure, but I'm sure you can find it._ )

.

Gilbert watches the two walk down the street and says nothing, at first. He doesn't know how to act, instincts screaming _leave_ and _approach_ in equal parts. He's always been impulsive, even when he was in Heaven, but now he has human adrenaline replacing... replacing... whatever angels have.

He doesn't think it's a fair trade, but he doesn't know who he'd take it up with.

Regardless, his conflicting instincts leave him frozen in place. Just before the couple turns the corner of the street, just before they leave his sight, the man turns back to look at him, violet eyes meeting sanguine, and Gilbert takes off at a sprint, mind all but screaming _go go go_. It isn't until his lungs are burning that he stops. Flight instincts are _something_ , he thinks. Run-run-run. Not nearly as fun as the _fight-or-_ part of the adrenaline rush.

.

Food is the best part about the world, probably. Gilbert eats french fries on the roof of the empty building he's sleeping in. He's not the only squatter, but people keep too themselves. He doesn't know how he'd go about finding a real house with a real bed given that he doesn't even have a real _name_ , so this will do. Beats Heaven any day. Apart from the pang in his chest when he thinks about his little bro, Gilbert doesn't miss Heaven at _all_.

.

Three days after Gilbert ran-ran-ran like the Hounds of Hell were on his tail ( _are there hounds down there?_ he wonders; he'd never considered it, really), he sees the violet-eyed man in a bar. The woman is there, draped over some tall fellow in a suit like she's his brand new scarf, and the man just watches out of the corner of his eye. Watches like he isn't watching.

Gilbert's seen this kind of thing before (during the first week after he Fell, a woman had draped over him in much the same way, kissed him after four drinks and said he looked like an old boyfriend, _old-soul-and-impulse_ , she'd said, _like fire_ , she'd said, and the woman had smiled like it was a sin and Gilbert kissed her, because... you never know, it might just be).

He can taste curiosity like a sugar cube between his teeth. Gilbert likes sugar cubes. They're his favorite. Like meat and beer and gym memberships and the way you can fold a shirt just right if you want to and German pop music from the 1990s.

But: curiosity. Of all the people here, in this bar, he finds he can't look away from the man in violet for long. Something calls to him.

Bars are crowded. When he first Fell, Gilbert didn't much like crowds—they'd walk through the spaces where his wings would-be-could-be-should-be and he'd shudder. Now he likes it, likes being swept along, usually likes watching the _whole_ crowd, humanity doing what humanity does best. But he can't focus on anyone but the couple, even as the woman seems to instigate a bar fight with just a word, throwing punches with the best of them as the man joins a few others in stepping back, a cocktail held delicately in one hand.

Gilbert steps away, too. He doesn't shy from a fight, but that only really applies to ones that _involve_ him. He doesn't involve himself in anything for no good reason. He's far too awesome to throw punches for strangers.

And anyway, the bartender quickly breaks up the fight, the bouncer escorts everyone involved out, threats about police are made. The man in violet sets down his glass and follows the fuming customers out the door, presumably to rejoin his lady.

Just before he reaches the door, he turns to look Gilbert in the eye once more.

"Coming?" he asks, and Gilbert freezes like a cornered mouse.

There's a pause, before the man shakes his head. "Never mind."

.

When he returns home ("home" still being an abandoned building and a sleeping bag), Gilbert dreams. A dreamscape that stubbornly refuses to align itself to the neat lines of Heaven or the crooked ones of Earth, a dreamscape made up of visions of a countryside he's never seen and old, old knights (Teutons) fighting holy wars making up the background.

"Gilbert," says a voice behind him, as he contemplates holy war.

"Ludwig," he says.

 _Bruder_ , he says. _What are you doing here, I:_

 _fell_

 _Fell_

 _died_

 _was exiled_

 _evicted Heavenly things from my head when I was kicked out_

 _missed you_

 _am dreaming_

 _,_ he says.

"Yes," Ludwig says, which doesn't explain very much at all. He's taller than Gilbert remembers him being. Or maybe Gilbert is shorter.

He feels his pulse hammering away like something that wants to escape, like a prey animal.

"Are you okay?" Ludwig asks. "Down here?"

 _Yes,_ Gilbert says, or maybe: "Yeah, I guess."

Ludwig doesn't answer for a moment.

"Why are you here?" he asks at last. "Are you supposed to tell me something? Is that the point of this?"

"Why does there have to be a point?" Ludwig asks.

Gilbert opens his mouth to retort but his brother is already saying, "No. There is a point. I came here to tell you a secret. There's a prophet on Earth."

"... So?" Gilbert manages.

"The Question, Bruder," Ludwig says, and Gilbert frowns. "The one God gave us, the one he put in our very bones. Rediscover holiness and you might be able to come home."

"How? How does knowing about a prophet help me 'rediscover holiness?'" Gilbert demands.

Ludwig seems to start a reply to him, but a loud crash sends Gilbert careening back into the waking world. Just outside, he hears cursing, car alarms going off.

"No, no, no!" he cries, jumping out of his sleeping back so he could kick at the nearest wall. " _Fuck_ , Ludwig, please! Don't leave just like that! Ludwig, _please_! Bruder!"

.

He doesn't see the couple again for another three days.

.

When he does, he's sitting at a different bar, and they drift in the door one at a time, as if pretending not to know one another. The woman sits in at a table in the back and the man sits next to him on a bar stool.

"Hey," Gilbert says, not looking up from the beer he'd been sipping at for the better part of an hour.

"Hello," replies the man, and then adds, "Roderich."

Gilbert guesses that must be his name. People down here sure do love those _what's your name? what's your name? what's your name?_

"Gilbert," he says in response.

"You are an angel?" Roderich asks, which is a good enough reason to pause and frown, as good a reason as Gilbert's had in his month-and-a-half of human-living.

"Yeah," he says at last, because it's better than explaining a topple out of Heaven to some human. By now, the woman has joined them.

"This is my wife, Elizaveta," he goes on, gesturing to her. The woman—Elizaveta—smiles.

"Pleased to meet you... Gilbert, was it? Sorry, I was listening from over there," she said, gesturing.

"Yeah, I kinda saw you," the albino says, rolling red eyes.

"We're good people," Roderich begins, with the kind of voice that sounds almost like a sales pitch.

"I don't need good souls," Gilbert says over the top of his mug of beer. "An accomplice was closer to what I was hoping for, if some human was going to come up and tell me he knows what I am."

"You sure this guy's really an angel?" Elizaveta asks, something in her tone more than a touch skeptical.

Roderich shrugs. "I can only repeat what I've heard."

Gilbert grins. "Nobody as awesome as I am could have been made on earth."

There's a flash of pain on Roderich's face, as if from a headache, but it's gone in a split second. Gilbert still doesn't know all the faces humans make, but pain is fairly unmistakable. People have given him that look before, usually after he proves his awesomeness, but occasionally after hitting someone in the face.

"The dust is settling," Roderich says, without preamble, as if his words are supposed to be obvious, "new ash from a new fire. Elizaveta and I are just trying to keep afloat in the world. But we're not perfect. Flaws. Faults. Weaknesses. The word in the Greek could be _asthenia_ ; it could again be _hamartia_."

Gilbert blinks. "What do you want from me?" he asks, frowning.

"Nothing," Elizaveta cuts in. "We just wanted to _meet_ you. Roderich says you're an angel."

"I am," Gilbert says, his voice more like a whisper than anything. It does not occur to him to lie to them. That is not very human of him but then... he is not wholly human, yet. Maybe he never will be.

"Roderich sees God's words in music," she explains.

"A prophet?" he asks, but he knows the answer already. This guy's a _prophet_. This is better than God, better than holiness, this is something both divine-touched and flawed. Humanity that can replace Godliness. Imperfection wrapped up in a purple package. He grins. "And so you want the _awesome_ me to help you with the visions or something?"

"No," Roderich says, shaking his head. "I want you to let me help _you_."

It's not often someone can leave Gilbert speechless. It occurs to him to be angry about it afterwards.


	4. luke 13:33

"Stupid Roderich and his stupid... his stupid..." Gilbert can't think of the word, flounders with his left hand as he paces the sidewalk outside the bar. " _Words_!" he settles on at last, but that isn't quite right.

He should go back inside—he'd departed the bar in a rush, and Roderich had merely nodded, like he'd expected it, like it was the normal reaction—but somehow he's finding himself stuck pacing the pavement outside. It's not that cold out, and the lights from each building on the street keep the area well-lit enough that he doesn't feel any sense of apprehension, none of that human fear of the dark that he'd developed.

He should go back inside, he should turn away and never come back. He was _kicked out_ , playing around with some prophet won't do him any favors, oh, if he could be smited just for _thinking_ about it he feels he probably would be. He waits for a moment, just in case someone up there was just taking their sweet time with the smiting, but nothing happens.

"Didn't think so," he says, more to himself than anything, sparing a glance at the heavens (which, in this case, means staring up at a streetlamp, because God can be found in light) before turning to head back inside, feeling just about untouchable.

"Fine," he says, sitting back down next to Roderich, which causes the man to jolt up from his drink, startled. That makes Gilbert smile—he'd felt like he's been on the back foot from the very beginning, nice to know that wasn't the case.

"Fine," he repeats. "Fine, if you _really_ want to help me, or whatever, you can. I guess if I were you, I'd want to hang around someone as awesome as I am, too. No, it's okay, don't worry about it. I get that a lot."

Roderich looks somewhat irritated, but Elizaveta's hiding a smile behind one calloused hand.

.

It progresses from there. That following Thursday afternoon, he's sitting in his usual booth at Antonio's restaurant when the Spaniard plops down across from him, Francis following behind with a mug of coffee in both hands.

"You look troubled, _amigo_ , what is it?" Antonio asks, and Gilbert shakes his head.

"That's not it, I just—hey, if you were a _musician_ , where would you hang out?" he asks after a moment, because: that's what Elizaveta had said. _Roderich sees God in music_ , in music. There's music everywhere in the world, Gilbert knows, that's something he's long understood about the Earth, but humans don't always listen for it. They tend to focus on specific types of music, the kind that they make themselves.

His friends share a look. "Looking to pick up an instrument, _mon ami_?" Francis asks. "There is a music shop I know of on fifth street, a block down from the public library, do you know what I refer to?"

Gilbert nods.

"The owner knows about everything from pianos to saxophones to xylophones, so whatever you wish to play, I'm sure he can help," Francis goes on before pausing to take a sip from the mug in front of him, which he immediately spits back into the cup. " _Qu'est-ce que c'est?_ " he demanded.

"Coffee," came Antonio's reply.

"This is like no coffee I've ever had!"

Antonio paused, picked up the mug to sniff at it, then let a smile fall across his face. "Ah, this is Lovino's day-old. He leaves the leftover coffee in the machine and then just adds enough new to dilute it. There must have been a lot leftover yesterday."

Francis' expression could best be described as 'polite horror.'

"Anyway, Gilbert," Antonio went on, changing the subject easily, seeminly unconcerned with his friend's expression, "which instrument do you want to learn to play?"

"Hey, I didn't say _anything_ about learning an instrument! What do I look like? Isn't music kind of... prissy?"

.

Gilbert can remember, if he tries, other prophets and saints, and how his more earnest siblings fell for them, moths to flame. Never Fell for them, of course. That would be stupid.

But the sons and daughters of men are born with stars in their eyes, and prophets get double that. They are limitless beings, not shut up in a set of angel-skulls. Limitless.

He doesn't want to wonder if Roderich is just as limitless and fascinating but: he does.

He wonders.

.

His second real conversation with Roderich and Elizaveta is much like the first in that it is infuriating, somehow. Roderich grates on his nerves and Gilbert has never understood the desire to snarl and argue before, but it's being drawn out of him like pus from a wound.

He mentions something to that effect, and Roderich's nose wrinkles with distaste. "What a metaphor," he says. Elizaveta laughs.

"How did you track down my music shop?" Roderich asks, choosing, apparently, not to dwell on allegories.

"Elizaveta said you see God in music. I asked someone I know where musicians like to hang out. He directed me here, said you know about xylophones and shit."

"Among other things, yes," Roderich says. Elizaveta laughs again, and she's lounging on a piano bench, apparently unconcerned with any of this.

"Who's this friend?" she asks.

"Just some guy," Gilbert says, evasive. Names don't mean as much to humans as they do to angels, but that doesn't mean he'll hand them out like... like... like something that gets passed around a lot. Candy, maybe? A song? Bottles of whiskey? He doesn't have everything he needs for metaphors, down here. Words without context. He has to make new comparisons.

"Okay, okay, I'll back off," Elizaveta goes on, and Gilbert shoots her a grateful smile.

Easier that way. If he doesn't have to explain it.

The bell over the music shop door chimes and Roderich looks up, sees a woman enter with a teenaged boy—mother and son, probably. "I have to help these two. If you'd like to chat later... there is a cafe down the block from here. Take a left outside the shop and you'll know it by the mint green chairs outside. Can you meet me there?" he asks.

Gilbert nods.

And out the door he goes.

.

On the awning above the outdoor part of the cafe there are birds nesting; their shit is all over the ground next to the table Gilbert is sitting at. He's sipping a cup of coffee, and it's better than what Antonio has Lovino serving. Does Antonio know this? Is this what coffee is supposed to taste like, or is this a weird deviation that tastes good just because it's different different? Gilbert isn't sure and, frankly, he doesn't care. He likes this coffee and so: he'll come back.

He looks up when he hears someone approach, but it's not Roderich, it's Elizaveta. That's okay, he supposes. He likes Elizaveta. She's pretty, the kind of pretty that he can normally only see looking _down_ on Earth, not from the angle he's currently at. She's tough, too, he can tell, from the bruises on her knuckles and the callouses on her palms. Probably she's other things, too, but he doesn't know about those yet.

There's something lingering around her edges that looks half like divinity and half like monstrosity, but mostly she just looks like a very attractive lady with long brown hair. Mostly she just looks... hot.

"Hey there, Gil," Elizaveta says. "Want to split a sandwich?"

"Is Roderich coming?" Gilbert responds, looking at the sandwich, hungry.

"He had some customers to take care of—kid needs to test out violas or something. I don't know. He asked me to keep you busy until he can catch up."

Gilbert nods, accepting the offered half-sandwich and digging in. "What is this?"

"Roast beef. Do they not have roast beef in Heaven?"

"We don't eat in Heaven."

"You're missing out," she says with a smile.

He grins back at her. "Tell me about it."

Seeing Elizaveta this close, Gilbert takes a moment to study her—her copper hair, her green eyes. Gilbert has never known anyone who looks at you the way Elizaveta looks at you—like she's studying you and like she wants to trust you all at once. Hopeful but guarded, or something.

Gilbert takes another bite of the sandwich, eats it like he's starving. Wait. No. More like:

Gilbert takes another bite.

He's starving.

"You okay?" Elizaveta asks, her frown bringing a crease in between her eyes.

"Yeah," he says around a mouthful of meat and bread. He swallows before attempting a longer sentence. "Hey. Did God really tell Roderich to help me out?"

She shakes her head. "Not as such. Just... mentioned you were here, apparently. In passing, but Roderich—he focuses on details, a lot. I don't know what else to tell you."

There was a short pause and then, god damn it, Gilbert's sucking on his teeth to keep from asking more. Elizaveta's not the prophet, she wouldn't _know_ about Ludwig, even Roderich likely wouldn't, if God wasn't big on elaboration. Gilbert's never thought of what it must be like to hear his Father's voice, even fragmented the way a prophet does.

"You okay?" he hears her ask again, and she sounds so damn _concerned_.

"Fine. I'm fine. Hey, how could someone who looks like _this_ be anything but!" he declares and if she's rolling her eyes at him, well, at least she isn't looking _concerned_ anymore.

They eat in silence for a while before Elizaveta looks up again, searching his eyes momentarily. "What's an angel of God doing down here? Is that kind of thing common?"

"No," he responds, talking more to his coffee than to her, eyes fixed. "It's really... really not."

"Do you miss it?"

"Sometimes."

"Then why leave?"

He lets out a huff of a laugh, shakes his head. It's stupid and it's not really fair, that he's sitting here, explaining his Fall to a girl who looks, around the edges, like divine monstrosity. "Dishonorable discharge," he settles on.

Her face falls. "Oh."

"Hoping for something more glamorous?"

"Hoping for someone who could actually help Roderich."

Gilbert looks up properly at that. "How do you mean?"

"Every time he has a vision or whatever, he gets a migraine, faints, starts speaking a language I've _never_ heard before, scribbles on anything he can get his hands on. It varies. It's not pretty."

Gilbert opens his mouth to say something about futility and _even a real angel couldn't help you, God made him to suffer_ but before he can, he hears someone clear their throat and looks up to see Roderich lingering by their table. "You aren't talking about me, I trust," he says, and his words are light, like a joke, but it is not a joke.

"Only good things," Elizaveta says. "And—I told him you get migraines."

"All prophets do," Gilbert shrugs, like it's no big deal, "you should have seen Daniel. Now _those_ were some classic symptoms."

"I'd rather not," Roderich states plainly, and Gilbert shrugs again.

"Hard to show you anyway. You weren't around then. But listen, it's just a thing that happens. You'll burn it out of you eventually, they all did. Once you do what God wants or whatever. Gotta tell someone _something_ sometime, and then it'll probably be over. I know that doesn't sound very, uh, _holy_ , but I can make up something about temples if you want."

"No, that's fine," Roderich replies, shaking his head.

"Smart. I'm not as good at talking about temples as others can be. Never mind. Don't worry about it. Hey, so—I hope you take care of yourself when you get headaches and stuff. If you die before you

"I thought 'prophets cannot perish outside Jerusalem.'"

"There are no other cities."

Roderich doesn't seem to know how to respond to that.


End file.
